#(even if he was a 30-40-50 year old no matter how old he is no fucking teenager is gonna call some guy they met as a 15 year old ''dad'')

[noelledeltarune]

EVERY SINGLE DAY there are MILLIONS of characters in their late 20s who get falsely accused of being father figures to teenagers when in reality the description of "weird older cousin" or "step-sibling that moved out before you were born" is 1000000x more apt

[autumnslance]

Normally I'd agree many Final Fantasy games have rather young protagonists. It's because they're usually single-player JRPGs made with the assumption of younger players, and like most Young Adult media, create characters that cater to that, even if it ends up with teens running the world and fighting in wars. And for many players, the first time playing these games is in childhood/adolescence/very young adulthood. So it's YA anime.

Final Fantasy XIV does not fall into that same mold, despite the "Teen" rating for legal and distribution purposes.

The majority of the FF14 cast, including the bulk of the main characters, are between 20 and 40 years old (the Scion Archons, Ishgard Elf Husbands). Many other characters are between 40 and 80 (Ishgard's Counts are all late middle aged to elder dads/grandpas, Gaius is mid 50s, Jehantel and Ran'jit are elderly, all still active). The younger characters (especially with any authority or special position) like the Leveilleur twins, are actually outliers. And the youth of the characters between 16 and 20 years old tends to be plot relevant, where that inexperience and naivety causes problems and drives story (Nanamo's arc at the end of ARR into HW, Alphinaud and the Crystal Braves, Ryne's determination of self in ShB, etc).

Characters have a variety of appearances; some characters in the same age ranges look very different. Varis is younger than X'rhun but Varis's model shows the stress and disagreeableness of his life a lot more than the RDM trainer's. Cid's in his mid-30s but with the beard looks older--and without it he has a baby face (hair color doesn't matter, cuz they do keep the anime trope of "everyone's got white or silver hair"). Lalafell are designed to be anime-cute halflings so it's hard to tell their adult ages even if they've got facial hair like grandfatherly Papashan. The pad'jal of course look like kids, but the youngest main pad'jal is A-Ruhn in his late teens; all the others are adults stuck in adolescent bodies. E-Sumi is a few hundred years old. Kan-E uses various methods to look older so other leaders and people from outside Gridania will take her seriously as an adult. The padjal introduced in the StB WHM quests is a child, and that's the plot; she's not in charge of anything, or has any particularly advanced-for-her-age skills. She's just a kid having a really rough time.

This inability to determine age by looking and assuming isn't just due to limits of the game engine and character creation options; it reflects real life. I met my work team for the first time in person recently; one person looked older than I know them to be, thanks to months of stress and health issues. While all of them were shocked to remember I'm in my 40s as according to them, I "look much younger". Most people are actually pretty bad at guesstimating ages based on appearance, due to the variety of folks' lives.

Speaking of kid characters, many of the children we interact with, like the Doman Adventurers, are between 12 and 14 and act much younger. Khloe has this going on too, with her age "corrected" to 13 (when previously listed as 10), but she acts way younger to me. Most of the actual child characters are treated like children, and it's not until they get to 14-16 (Honoroit, Leveva) that we start to see them treated like maturing adolescents and having some rsponsibilities, but still young and prone to the kind of choices one expects of less experienced and more emotional youth.

As a MMO, FF14's primary audience is actually adults; teens do play the game, but also age up with it if they keep playing. If a 15 year old began playing with ARR's release, they're in their mid-20s now. Having a primarily adult cast, and treating child characters like children, and adolescents like young people figuring out how young adulthood works, makes sense for this game.

FF14's time bubble is also part of the issue; a developer tool to keep it so they don't have to worry too much about character ages, new models so often, or how long things take in game. Timelines are then intentionally left malleable for the players' benefits, to create our own stories and determine how long things take for our WoLs and their tales. Some folks have their stories pass in real time, some compress it to a year per expac, some expand it out even longer. So the ages the characters have listed in the lorebooks and rarely in game (which is then reflected in online resources), is a starting baseline. Personal headcanons as always should be applied (including changing around some character ages to fit one's own story if necessary).

Also, FF16, made by the same team, has a brief prologue/tutorial section where the main trio is between 10 and 15, guided/trained by adult characters, experience the inciting incident trauma--and then we spend the majority of the game with the main cast in their 20s and 30s. The game also has a mature rating, featuring some sexual situations, lots of violence, and stronger language than other FF games. It's made for adults, and its cast reflects that.

So it is a matter of audience expectations; for a MMO, you're going to have an older and aging player base, and the varied ages of the cast reflect that, as do their varied appearances and experiences as adults. The young characters are treated closer to how their youth should be; still with respect for those in positions like Nanamo, but also prone to errors due to inexperience that drive story. In other FF titles, which were made to be more YA-focused, a teen and young 20s cast were treated much differently. But even in the single-player FF titles, if they are made with adult players in mind, their cast and stories likewise reflect that.

[bluegekk0]

you mentioned keeping quirrel alive. if i recall, after he take the mask off in the Archive he mentions felling old(as if the mask was keeping him young to fulfill his duty). so how old do you place him relative to other mortal bugs like elderbug and zote

He would certainly be on the older side, though I do think the mask slowed down his aging process a bit (aside from maintaining his peak form, which is the main reason why he felt so tired and old after losing it).

I imagine he was very young while he was Monomon's student/apprentice, maybe even a teenager (since the bugs reach maturity sooner, he would technically be an adult while being around 16 or 17), so he was given the mask while still young. The dreamers went to sleep around 45 years prior to FPK waking up from hibernation, and about 50 years prior to now (as a point of reference: Lewk was born about 4-5 years after FPK woke up frim hibernation and reunited with Grimm, Asta and Milo were born a year later, the current AU timeline is "frozen" 2-3 months after they were born).

So Quirrel would be nearing 70 now, which is about the average lifespan for most bug species in the AU. But with the mask slowing down his aging, I think he's physically closer to 50. Still considered old by their standards, but not near-death old. He still has plenty of life left in him, he's just not as youthful and strong as he used to. This is why I imagine he decided to spend the rest of his life continuing Monomon's legacy, to honor her and to live the time he has left in peace.

Elderbug is actually far younger than that, I place him at just under 40. He was stated to be the oldest bug in Dirtmouth, and because its population was very low for the longest time (and the mortality rate was high due to the infection), nearing 40 would be an achievement worthy of such title. He was born soon after the infection returned, so he didn't experience the short period of peace after Holly's sealing.

Zote, as I mentioned before, is actually fairly young, in his early 20s I imagine. He looks and sounds older because of bad genes and his desire to sound more like a mature warrior. But he's very much a confused young adult, no matter how much he tries to hide it.

Iselda and Cornifer are similar in age, they would be in their 30s. I think Iselda might be a little bit older than Cornifer, but it's a difference of a few years at most.

Ogrim is a strange case if I'm being honest. He's been around for many, many years, far longer than the average lifespan. It's possible that FPK somehow halted the aging process of his great knights, or at the very least slowed it down significantly (if that's the case, then perhaps he was also responsible for Quirrel's slowed aging. Maybe it was Monomon's last request?). He was around for the encounter with The Shade Lord/Black Wyrm, which happened around 50 years before FPK's hibernation, but he was already a knight that so he could've been born 20 years prior to that. Let's go with that (I don't think the exact numbers matter here), that means he was 70 when FPK disappeared, and adding the 35 years when FPK was hibernating and the 5 years after his return, that would mean Ogrim is around 110 years old. Quite an impressive age for sure. But with the slowed down/halted age, I think he's closer to 50. I do think his species has a longer average lifespan than most species in Hallownest, so he's not actually that old in that context. But definitely not as youthful as he once was.

Tiso is in his 20s, similar age to Zote. Lemm is 30-40, Sly is in his 40s, the nailmaster brothers are nearing 30. Lurien didn't age during his time as a dreamer so he's in his 40s.

I'm definitely missing some characters here but these are the ones off the top of my head.

[castielsprostate]

Why are you acting like the Netherlands haven't just won

hi anon, you chose the wrong person to say this to. please don't fucking come at me with this kind of fucking bullshit. if you didn't read my blog info, which i dont except the average pvv supporter to do (no offense), then you'd know the way i identify! woagh! and you'd ALSO know that i actually don't feel very welcome or safe anymore and that im terrified of the people around me because of the person they voted for. the netherlands did not win, they didn't win anything fucking at all if they're regressing on human rights and electing one of the biggest bigots there are. you say "nederland weer op 1" but you know who funds PVV right? you know he gets his money from russia and isreal, right? you know that he does not care about you, right? and that the regular citizen is nothing to him, right? and you know that after he comes for those from an immigrant background, he will come for the LGBT community. he will come for the disabled. he will come for women's rights. he will come for the rights of everyone except white, rich, old men. he doesn't care about the working class, and he sure as all fuck can't make true on his promises. most of the things he wants goes against our constitution, how fucked up is it that people still voted for that?

he wants to cut off immigration, including those that come here for work. he wants to then increase the size of our healthcare and our healthcare workers. quick question, who is going to work in our healthcare? we are already on a shortage, who's going to pick up what's yet to come?

he wants to build more homes, but who's actually going to build those? like, physically, who is going to put those houses together because, guess what! there's no one to do the fucking work. no one works in ANY of these professions anymore, no one WANTS to work in them either. so he would need to get funding to make schooling free for these professions, or create incentives. but where do we get that money? where would you get a billion to make med school (rough term, not really what the term is here) free for only one year? ah, i hear you say, just pull the funding from ukraine and the developing countries. well, 1.) we can't, we're legally obligated to keep paying, and if he somehow does find a way to stop the funding then 2.) we will be hit with fines from both the EU and the NATO, and maybe even the UN. and guess who will pay that, anon? it will be the working class, since he doesn't want to make companies pay more tax, so it will be you and me that pay for this.

and all that isn't even the massive impact he will have on our climate, and don't try the fucking "netherlands is only a small country, it doesn't matter what we do because the us china and russia and india womp womp" because no matter how small the step is, small steps are worth it, too.

and, may i also remind you, anon <3 dat geert wilders in zijn zielige, donkere kut hartje altijd een VVD'er zal zijn. hij is een waardeloze, racistische, homofobische, ellendige, koude oude man en dat is NIET en zal NOOIT zijn wat nederland nodig heeft.

and finally, geert wilders is NOT what the majority of the netherlands wants, it's what 23% of voters want. every other voter did NOT vote for this buffoon, and you're gonna be in those booths again in 6 to 9 months because of the incompetence of the coming kabinet because geert wilders will destroy it.

en, als laatste. stem links bij de volgende verkiezing. stem GL/PVDA of stem volt, stem op de groene partijen die WEL de begroting doorrekenen, die ons WEL uit deze crisis kunnen krijgen en die WEL om ons geven. denk niet aan de toekomst van alleen morgen, denk ook aan de toekomst van over 10, 20, 30, 40, 50! jaar. want op de manier waarop het nu gaat, is er niet meer dan 50 jaar. en dat ene jaar 0% belasting op boodschappen (wat hij trouwens ook niet kan waarmaken, de belastingdienst heeft jaren nodig voor zoiets te kunnen invoeren lmao. misschien heb je het in 2030! en daarna schiet het weer om hoog <3), is niet waard de gruwelijke dood van jou, je kinderen, en iedereen om je heen.

-all the love, sjonnie, a half turk, queer faggot

[moon-struck-net]

Yahoo Japan/Josei Jishin Interview July 4th 2023

https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/1d9cf92309815982cc6fa71684362c64fc9763ea

Up until now, the impression I had of age 50 was "the end of your life". I was conscious of Oda Nobunaga's saying that "life has 50 years". But now I understand that "life has 50 years" doesn't mean you can only live for 50 years, it’s about how much can you get done before you're 50. You can't go back to being in your 30s or 40s. I came to feel that what's most important in life is how much you were able to run at full speed up to that point. 

Previously I had been wondering internally how much I could get done by age 30, and I thought that it would be downhill from there and end at 50. So honestly what I'm thinking now is "Somehow I'm still alive," and "I've made it this far," that kind of thing. 

GACKT had his 50th birthday on July 4th. The release of the long-awaited movie that he is starring in- "Fly Me To The Saitama: From Lake Biwa With Love" has been announced for November 23rd. GACKT had previously kept his age secret from the public, and first announced it in 2009 along with the production of the play Nemuri Kyoshiro Burai Hikae, which he was starring in. We asked his honest thoughts. 

The question of whether to announce my age or not wasn’t really on my mind. But at the time, I wondered if it might be time to say it. My fans didn't know either.

The producer I had back then happened to suggest that I tell people my age, so I said "Ok". It wasn't something I particularly wanted to hide. So then I think there were a lot of people who thought "Wait, he's younger than me? He acted like he was older (laughs)."

[Translator’s note: GACKT is talking about how in Japanese culture, younger people usually defer to people older than them, but GACKT was behaving as though he were the one with more seniority]

There was only one reason that I concealed my age. When I was 20 and I moved to Tokyo and started doing music, everyone around me was senior to me. So if I said how old I was I'd immediately be treated as a junior and they'd walk all over me. The roles of senpai (senior) and kouhai (junior) are just decided by age, right? If I said my age, people older than me disrespected me, so I never told anyone my age, outside of my band members at the time. So I made up that I was 448 years old.

If someone was like "You're definitely younger than me. If you're going to have a disrespectful attitude toward me, then I'll crush you," I'd be like "You wanna go then?" Back when I was in a band it was like that all the time.

Most years, GACKT celebrates his birthday with a private party

On July 4th I usually have a concert or a birthday event, and when that's all over and I'm tired out I have a private party. 300 to 400 people attend, so I prepare a large amount of alcohol. In the beginning it was wine, but for the last 12-13 years it's been tequila. Even if each person speaks for one minute, if 400 people are there it takes 400 minutes, 7 hours. It's tough to keep drinking wine for that long, right?

So I thought I'd make it a "tequila survival challenge" party for everyone to participate in. I contact people and tell them that only those who are always in a state of readiness should come. I make them sign a contract at the door too. Saying no matter what happens here it's their own responsibility.

When my birthday party begins, my friends come on stage and immediately drink 10 shots of tequila, so it's tough (laughs). So everyone rapidly fades. At the end only about 30 people remain. At the end everyone staggers home.

I'm all alone when everyone leaves. But I'm totally hyped up and can't sleep, so from morning I start texting everyone. Of course no one replies. When it gets to the afternoon, finally people gradually start to reply "Are you okay?" I reply "I've been texting people all morning. I'm lonely."

At those times I think, "Maybe this is what the battlefield is like." They say people who survived the war and came home, go back to the battlefield. They can't psychologically accept everyday life and feel a sense of emptiness. No one wants to drink any more, and it's not that I want to drink either, but I understand the feeling of wanting to return to an extreme situation. Though people will probably call me strange for thinking things like that (laughs)"

But, when I went on hiatus due to my health issues, I became unable to handle alcohol. I couldn’t drink 5 or 6 bottles of tequila like I used to. On my previous birthday, I only drank about 3.

At the end of last year, in an interview with this magazine, GACKT spoke of writing a will during his one year hiatus. It seems that ahead of turning 50 he had an opportunity to think about his end-of-life plans.

I wrote about 20 wills. Saying things like, "Divide my fortune like this, sell my cars". I wrote about leaving my pet dogs in the care of my sister and my staff, that kind of thing.

I've also told my sister about my burial. I said, "Scatter my ashes in the sea in Okinawa." I don't need a grave. I've never wanted one. I don't want people to visit my grave. It's enough if people will look at the sea and clasp their hands in prayer. I thought about this when buying graves for relatives and things like that. I don't want to be in a grave.

Every year I go back to Okinawa and clean my family's tomb. That's become my role now. I bring at least 20 to 30 staff and clean the graves.

I've been helping clean the graves since my late 20s, but everyone else in my family got old and couldn't do it any more.

Okinawan tombs are big in the first place. Ours is in the mountains, and was rebuilt because it was old, but it's still the size of this studio (where today's photo was taken).

It used to be bigger. I remember when I was 6. We'd go through the sugar cane fields in a car, and then walk the paths between the fields into the mountains, so it was a hard time even getting there. Moss and weeds would grow on the big tomb, and we had to clean off all the dirt too. We tried to go at times when habu (Okinawan pit vipers) wouldn’t come out.

There was an altar as well as the tomb, and the altar and the tomb are in different parts of Okinawa. My ancestors originated in the southern part of Okinawa. So the tomb is in the south, and because my great grandfather founded a town up north, the altar is in the north. So it's not possible to clean the tomb and the altar on a day trip. At the very beginning I went in a group of 6 people, but we couldn't finish and it took two and a half days just to clean the tomb.

I don't want the generation after me to have to do unpleasant things like that. If people have to keep organizing things every year after I die, that will be tough on them, right?

So scatter my ashes. I'll be happy if people come to the sea and I can say "I'm here". And if eventually people stop coming, it won't cause trouble for anyone.

[cowgurrrl]

this isn't a request or anything but I just wanted to say that: no matter how delusional I sound, rockstar!joel and actress!reader are real to me! 😭😭 listen, they're so SO entertaining and i just love them lots so THANK YOU for giving us content of them!! 💜💜 (also rockstar!joel is SOOOO attractive, both him and reader. power couple fr)

(i did have one quick question lol. ik it was mentioned somewhere before but what is the age difference between joel and reader, how old were they both when they met? ANDDDDD.....have they garnered any criticism from that despite being adults? lol)

THEY ARE REAL TO ME TOO SO THIS MAKES MY HEART SO HAPPY 🥹🥹🥹 this was really just such a silly idea at the beginning but it’s very quickly become one of my faves so thank you for loving it as much as I do and TELLING me how much you love it!! They’re truly such a comfort to write and to see people find that same comfort in them is such a privilege I just ugh 😭😭

But to answer your question about the age gap, there is a blink and you miss it discussion of it in I’m Still Standing where Carolina asks how old reader was when she met Joel and she says (and I made this vague for readers to input their own birthdays) “I was… Gosh, I think I was twenty-eight or twenty-nine. Somewhere around there. We met when Ryan and I were filming Hyde… Joel was either thirty-nine or forty when we met. Or, maybe he was forty because we met in the fall, and his birthday is in September.”

I kinda played around with the time frame and I don’t really have a set year in which this all takes place so it’s not a perfect timeline to present day/canon age but it’s fiction for a reason lol!! The timeline in my head is they meet when she’s like ~28/29 and he’s ~39/40 and they’re together for about nineish months (bringing us to spring/summer of the next year when reader would be ~28/29/30 (depending on your birthday) and Joel would be ~39/40) when she goes to Ireland for fifteen months so that would make it like late summer/early fall of the second year when they get back together (r: ~30/31, j: ~41-42) They’re together for like two more years (r: ~32/33, j: ~43/44) before getting engaged and have a year long engagement before getting married (r: ~33/34,j: ~44/45) and then have their first child Sammy two years later on May 15th (either right before or right after Ellie’s birthday and two months before Sarah’s) making reader ~35/36 and Joel ~46/47 when Ellie and Sarah are 20 and 24, respectively. By the time their family is complete with the arrival of the twins four years later reader is ~39/40, Joel is ~50/51, Ellie is ~24, and Sarah is ~28 and Sarah’s first child, Isaac, is ~2!

That’s a lot of math and numbers I just threw at you but the general idea is that they’re 11-12 years apart. I see them maybe getting some criticism from fans but I don’t think it’d be anything as intense as these other celebrity couples with 20-40 year age gaps between them and their partners!! I hope that answered your question and gave you a general timeline of the relationship even though I don’t think that’s what you asked for lol!!

[rhysdarbinizedarby]

Rhys Darby: Have fun, it keeps you young

I bought this fine piece of dandy in a Vegas thrift store. It's perfect for hosting a Ponsonby quiz night.

Don't be ridiculous, there's no cut-off age to letting loose.

Last week, I hosted a quiz night. I know ... remember when I used to be in movies?

Oh well, it was for my kids' school, so I felt good about it. Besides, I got to wear my sparkling Vegas suit. It's a fine piece of dandy I bought in a thrift store in LA. It's baby blue in colour and bedazzled with diamond-like gems. Perfect for hosting a Ponsonby quiz night.

The school seems to be in pretty good shape. Unfortunately the same can't be said for my kids. I took them away from the country for three months touring the UK and they didn't get ill once, but after being deposited back in their local institutions, they were both as sick as dogs within a week.

Schools and daycares certainly are breeding grounds for viruses. Both my boys were hit with chesty coughs and conjunctivitis.

It's near impossible to deposit eye drops into a two-year-old's eyes. We just held him back and used the surprise technique. That works only once. After that, we simply dropped the the liquid as close to the facial region as possible and then tipped him about until it rolled into the sockets. The poor little guy came into our bedroom at 3AM with one of his eyes glued shut with goo.

"Look, Mummy and Daddy, I'm a pirate!"

Children are amazing. It doesn't matter how they're feeling, their glass is always half full. Half full of chocolate milk with sprinkles on top. I hope I never lose my child-like sensibilities.

Being an adult weighs you down, man. I think it's important for us all to let loose once in a while and do something youthful. That's why I still skateboard to work. It's invigorating to have the wind in your hair as you whizz past the suits holding onto their coffees. Sure, now and then I get pointed at, even laughed at. But hey, I'm used to that.

I often wonder, what is the cut-off age for youthful fun? I see lots of men in their 30s skating on longboards. My right-hand man "Buttons" even bought a special pushing pole so he could grace his way along the paths like a punter in Venice. Was he ridiculed? Of course, but that has nothing to do with his pole.

Source: Rosie Carnahan Darby's IG

I think it comes down to "coolness levels". It's okay for a man in his late 50s to surf the ocean waves because it's rad. But when you see a man in his 40s riding a razor scooter along Ponsonby Rd it just seems a little sad.

I say, "to hell with it".

Ride, skate and surf to your heart's content. If you're still breathing then you should still be having fun. Just choose your activity wisely. On a ridicule scale of 1 to 10, cycling is a 1 but unicycling is a solid 8.5 unless you're wearing a sparkling Vegas suit, in which case it's a 10.

Source: NZ Herald

[kooktrash]

I'm struggling to process his smoking, but not for reasons most people are complaining about. I lost my grandma at a young age to emphysema. The only memories I really have of her are her oxygen tanks all over her home. She couldn't even leave her house because she was oxygen dependent. My uncle has emphysema and it's hard seeing him go through really bad coughing spells. There have been times where I thought he was going to pass out from coughing so hard. My parents have been heavy smokers for 40+ years, so I'm worried about them too. My mom's lips have ugly brown stains on them from all the smoking. My uncle's fingernails are stained brown. All of their teeth are stained brown. It's really hard seeing the people you love look like that and die from that.

Aside from that, I had first hand experience what living with smokers is really like. It's not a glamorous lifestyle. I lived at home with my parents for about 25 years. There is nothing worse than watching the pretty color you picked for your walls in your bedroom turn brown within a year of painting. There is nothing worse than picking up a picture frame of you and your best friend and feeling how sticky it is from nicotine. It covers everything and turns it all brown and sticky. And washing it? Forget about it. Just throw it away. And there is nothing worse than at 13/14 years old going to a friend's birthday party and your friends asking why you smell like an ashtray. And there's nothing worse than your friends not wanting to come to your house because of how bad the smell of smoke. I can't tell you how alienated I felt as a teenager because all of my friends hated the smell of smoke. My parents were the only smoking parents out of my friend group.

All I have are bad memories relating to people smoking. It led to a lot of embarrassment for me. So for me to see JK smoking, all I picture is him at 50 years old looking like my parents and uncle with their stained lips, teeth and fingernails, or worse, being oxygen dependent and dying like my grandma. It's very hard for me to process that JK isn't going to turn out like that. I just keep seeing the negative side of it, and the images are horrifying to me.

I know that he is a grown adult that is well aware of the risks of smoking. It's his decision to ignore those risks. I'm not about to parent him. I don't even know him, so my opinion doesn't matter to him. I hope he's smoking casually, or socially with friends. I hope he's not smoking several packs a day like my family members do. I know how important singing is to him, and I want him to have a happy, healthy, successful career. I don't want to see his career cut short because of the decisions he made in his 20s. I wish he would not only think about today, but also think 10, 20, 30 years down the line. Your body does not stay young forever. The things you do when you're young affect you greatly as you age. Once you hit your 40s and 50s, you wind up regretting a lot of stuff you did in your 20s. Trust me, I know from experience. It's true.

None of what I've said will ever change the way I adore him. I think he is an amazing person, and a wonderful singer. He will always be my bias. I will never abandon him as a fan. I will always support him. But I don't have to support or like every decision he makes. We are all unique and we all have different opinions because we have experienced different things in life. For me, smoking has always been negative. So I come at his smoking from a negative point of view. Somehow I will have to accept it and move on and not let it bother me so much. But for now it's fresh in my mind and bothering me. I hope you can understand why I feel the way I feel.

i totally get it and this is just my opinion now but I’ve also always been surrounded by smokers all my life and I guess for ME I just don’t think of it as that big of a deal. Not to mention, most of us already knew that he vaped and like we knew Taehyung did too y’know and i think Yoongi but im not sure, I guess I just don’t see how it’s that big of a surprise to some [not saying you <3] to see him smoke and then attack him for it. he’s grown and he knows the dangers of smoking and like you don’t have to support his decisions but it’s the people villainizehim for a norm thing that drive me nuts

[the-cat-at-the-theatre-door]

modern productions of cats stop age-ing down the characters challenge. let jelly be older let jenny be older let skimble be older. and not even casting wise because that is another discussion entireely i think. just how the characters get played they most seem to be so much younger. even munkustrap skews SO young lately and hes not even an old character

One of my IRL friends once said that Munkustrap is a 40 year old man and I have never been able to read him as anything else, and tbh that tracks. Hard agree. Munkustrap being anything but in his thirties or more does not compute to me. Late twenties if I am being *really* generous. The vocal maturity alone is already in this...really weird young tenor high spot that I don’t like - what I’m going to call the “theatre kid” belt voice fresh outta school and it stayed that way - the 2016 Revival, if you will. 

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. 

I will say I don’t think we can fully separate the conversation of the casting age of the performers from this overall point - 20 year-olds really shouldn’t be playing individuals who are meant to be 50 plus when the performance world already has so few roles for them/fucks them over by casting younger people in age makeup when they do. Like, no, Old Deuteronomy shouldn’t be 26 in 2022. Doesn’t matter how good they are - they’ll still be good in fifteen years. Neither should Gus. Neither should Grizabella. That should be the baseline standard on its own. With the other cats that are perhaps meant to be on the older side (though again, this is more up to interpretation in, say, Skimble’s case but tbh it has no reason to be), you can get moreso away from stricter limitation and “act” a bit older and cast more vocally mature individuals, but like...30+ year old performers exist. Their abilities don’t suddenly disappear after they turn 40. They don’t stop existing after 50. If they’re worried about them keeping up or their ability to perform in something demanding like CATS up to 9-10 times a week, cast multiples - Korean and Japanese theatre does this all the time (what was that? more money? that sounds like a production company problem to me).

But that’s just my opinion. 

[tanoraqui]

Tanoraqui’s Coherent Theory of Finwëan Relative Ages (Years of the Trees Only)

Click Here to see the complete timeline of birth years and other notable events, including reasoning for various non-canon dates, and be sure to visit the second tab for a breakdown of Elf vs. Man aging rates and foundational headcanons about how time works and a few key familial relationships! Also below the cut.

Note on graph: ”as Men would Reckon” meaning, if you looked at that elf’s face and watched them behave for a bit, how old would you say they are if they were a human.

MORE CHARTS!:

Time Headcanon:

Tolkien's calculation of roughly 10 Sun Years to 1 Tree Year is correct, but time passes more slowly [closer to the Trees/in Valinor in general/close to the Valar themselves] [take your pick], or at least it seems to; same difference because time is fake, especially for immortals. This is called "Valinorian Temporal Reduction" (VTR) and it shakes out to about 1/5 the speed of Sun Years, or 1 Tree Year in Valinor = 2 Sun Years. NB: this did NOT effect Elves left in Middle Earth, which is why the Moriquendi population has swelled greatly in proportion to the Calaquendi by the time the Noldor Exiles arrive.

Aging Headcanon:

Somewhere around looking 30-35ish, Elves really hit that "ageless beauty" where they look young and ancient at once, and stay there. Some get there faster, or seem to age into 40s or even 50s, due to greater stress in life (common in those who stay longer in Middle Earth) This may or may not alleviate with rest; Elves, too, can be "old souls." Presenting as older is also common in elves with children, grandchildren, etc (due to personal sense of maturity/responsibility).

In fact, in Middle Earth, certainly in First Age Middle Earth, a 600-year-old Elf probably looks and acts/feels solidly 35, if not 40, though it's still plateauing there. The increased aging rate is almost entirely from age 100 onward - childhood aging (to mortal "18") is still about the same no matter what stressors are about. That is, emotional maturity can be affected, but the hröa's aging isn't any more than a Man's would be.

Note that by all this logic of year counts and aging, Finwë - who I think wasn't one of the original 144 Elves but was probably the quickly coming 2nd or 3rd gen - was about 800-860 (sun) years old (700-800 ME years + 72 VTR), putting him in Mannish mid to late 30s at Fëanor's birth. He probably picked up the equivalent of a year or two from then until his death.

Key Finwëan Familial Headcanons the Shaped the Birth Years Headcanons (no particular order): 

Finarfin and Earwen also married young, even younger than Fëanor and Nerdanel (ELOPED, in fact)

Fëanor and Nerdanel have kids whenever they get particularly horny over creation, with no regard for anything or anyone else

Maedhros is slightly older than Finarfin, but this is the only Finwean grandchild/child mix

No children were conceived out of competition or spite, except maybe great-grandchildren

Orodreth is a great-grandchild, son of Angrod and Eldalote

Orodreth was a mature enough adult in FA 102 that leaving him in charge of Tol Sirion was reasonable

It's traditional in Middle Earth to have elf kids at the same time as other elf kids. Slightly less common in Valinor, but still common.

Apprenticeship standardly starts at E!15-16, Curufinwës all started at E!14. (I know in my heart that the Noldor have guilds, though I don't think "journeyman" is what they'd call that rank - journeying prob. wouldn't have been as much of a thing?)

Again, check out the full timeline here! Yes, it was significantly faster (and more fun) to make a chart myself with colored pencils than to enter a billion values into Excel, especially given that there’s no actual formula for this Man/Elf age conversion. I think it got lost with everyone mixed together, but Fëanorians are in red shades, Fingolfinians in blues, and Finarfinians in yellows (more or less).

[dash-n-step]

I understand being wary of people weird about sonic characters who have previously been stated to be kids: people are weird and there's so many cases of characters in many franchises getting sexualized that people at large have zero idea are actually young

but I think it's very important to understand that the main cast of characters in the sonic series are in a perpetually nebulous "whatever gets the character's point across" state, because you can only say "Amy Rose is twelve" so many times before you have to acknowledge that in current canon she's been in charge of a whole resistance force and all the bureaucracies that entails, her entire friend group is made up of either people who are functionally treated as young adults or explicitly younger to the degree of being characterized as children, she has a car that she uses to take these friends camping with

There's also the general lack of acknowledging that SEGA has actively made attempts to have the characters progress: if not through the acknowledged as game canon IDW comics then in Frontiers, when they made the characters more mature to the point people were like "what the heck is up with Sonic's voice". Like a big part of the ending of that game is saying "these characters have grown from who they were before, and they plan on going their own way for a while".

and to not just focus on the Amy, going purely by old stated ages, because this isn't trying to be all "10000 year old little girl": Rouge is 18 while Knuckles is 16 "but two year age gap" that's still an adult and a teenager. Shadow is also supposedly only 16, with 50 years in cryo. With Sonic being 16 (classic and somehow still modern), any relationship with Amy is incredibly weird when removed from her "just being a fangirl with dreams of an unobtainable guy/idol".

And to be clear, people who have an issues with these pairings precisely because of these messed up ages that were given out official for years are completely valid, it fucking sucks that it's like this, but I can't fully blame people for thinking that in the 30+ years sonic has been a franchised they they get viewed as being adults, especially with how they're written.

Like, Tails main thing is being a child genius, and the "little brother" to Sonic, so he's always going to be the "young one" regardless of whatever age you give these characters, putting him with Cream and Charmy who are also always going to be "the kids"/immature ones. But of those three characters, Charmy is the only one really written as being so immature that you can't argue that they time has passed for him because they don't really do much with them.

That's not even getting into the multiple canons that you can't just assume line-up 100% to old info, like when the archie comics made Amy too young then "aged her" visually to her Sonic Adventure look and then largely ignored that, or when the archie comics made the entire cast adults anyway in the future arcs, or how Sonic Boom can be a completely different context cause it doesn't follow the main canon.

I wouldn't be surprised if that's part of why they're trying to phase Rouge as part of the main group, to better lessen the weird range they've randomly put these characters in over the years because they weren't thinking long term and just what worked for their character. "child genius sure 8, cocky teenager yeah that's about 16 we want that audience to buy our games right? big booby bat lady who has worked with the government and is a spy with experience? Just make her 18"

But then you also have to acknowledge the elephant in the room that some people are just fucking weird no matter what and that years of anime abusing these weird age tropes have made the old sonic writers not really care or just not think about it

because it's the anime character ages problem, I'm just spending a long time describing this 40 second video, god damn it

I think at the end of the day you just have to be vigilant and aware of when someone is acting in bad faith, because I would like think SEGA doesn't *want* people to proactively pair up a twelve year old with a sixteen year old, or show off an adult being paired up and teasing actual children, and it's why they've more recently made strides in trying to have a stronger cohesive brand/lore (sometimes just causing more arguments a la sonic prime being "canon" and people not understanding what that means)

[dhaaruni]

Dhaaruni, do you get any snide comments about your bf being younger and what do you say back if you do? I'm interested in someone a few years younger than me (we're both over 21) and even though my friends are super supportive and think he's a great guy and much more mature than people even older than us, they keep sneaking comments about how it's so ~cute and adorable ugh.

It's crazy how it's normalized for a young woman to date men 5-10-15 (and more!) years older than her (justified under myths about how men age like fine wine while women age like MiLk, or how men mature more slowly than women), but people act like it's sooo weird when it's the opposite! Obviously I DO NOT approve of situations like Emmanuel Macron and his wife's relationship, but people act like you're cougar if you're like, idk, an early 30s woman dating someone late 20s, while 30-year old men are courting high school girls. It's sick!

People are sometimes surprised when they find out I'm 5 years older but luckily we haven't gotten too many snide comments and the ones that I've gotten, I just basically shut them down in a "well it's not your relationship so not your business." Or that's the gist of it anyways.

I agree with your later statements though like nobody would bat an eye if my boyfriend was 29 and I was 24 but since it's the other way around, it's considered ~weird despite the fact we look about the same age and some people have even said I look younger. There's the stereotype that men mature slower than women but personally, I've always thought that was just a way to justify excusing men's bad behavior. Like, there are men in their 40s and 50s who cheat on their wives and treat their families horrifically so clearly they don't mature beyond selfishness even then which makes me believe it's really about social conditioning and the patriarchy permitting men to be in a state of arrested development that women are forced out of in their teens.

But yeah, if you like the guy and you think he'd be a good partner, go for him! As long as you're both legally allowed to drink, age gaps really don't matter that much if you're in similar phases in life. I don't really think a divorced person in their 40s has anything in common with a 25-year-old but if you're both in your 20s and are gainfully employed but not in the marriage-kids phase yet, it makes total sense why you'd date a guy a few years younger.

[professor-walnut]

Sometimes like today when my depression gets out of control for a while, I'll do things like search the internet desperately for advice or motivation to make it through another night, unable to come up with my own reasons. And scrolling through places like redit; all I see over and over is the phrase "it gets better"

And listen man, I have never hated anything more than that phrase.

I was first diagnosed as depressed when I was eight. "You'll grow out of it" the doctor said.

I went to therapy at 14 when I was suicidal. "You'll feel better when you're older and your hormones calm down" she said.

I got put on antidepressants at 17. "You'll be fine once you finish school and get into a routine" the doctor told me.

At 23 I was told "Excersize, healthy eating, a good social group, get all that down and things will get better"

I'm 26 nearly 27 and I've followed every rule and piece of advice and it has never gotten better, every year it gets worse, it gets harder.

Life never stops getting harder. You can do everything 'right', you can get perfect grades in school and be polite and kind and avoid drugs and alcohol and work hard at everything you do, but sometimes you'll still end up unemployed and burnt out and poor and lonely. Sometimes no matter what you do you'll be a failure.

So hearing "things will get better" frustrates me, probably frustrates many people. Because when does it get better? Have you ever met a depressed person who has experienced it get better? Probably not.

So you know what, here's a better piece of advice to keep trying, for anyone else out there trying to find reasons.

Maybe everyone else in your life is doing better than you, they have jobs and families and hobbies, and you're sleeping 20 hours a day and feeling worthless and lying to your family about how you're doing all the time so they won't be disappointed. Maybe you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s - and you still havn't achieved anything worthwhile, maybe you never will.

But once back in university I went out at 3am with the intention of ending my life, I was having a panic attack during a depressive episode, suicide hotline was busy and I went out almost in a daze with the intention of stepping into traffic desperate to end the terrifying panic and pain. But during my walk, a knock down drunk guy passed me and he smiled at me. He didn't even say anything, just smiled as he stumbled past.

For whatever reason, that tiny, seemingly insignificant gesture was enough to make me think twice about my decisions and go back home.

How many times have you smiled at someone on the street in passing, or at a cashier at a store, or at the bus driver? Probably 99% of the time it barely makes a difference to someone's day, but maybe 1% of the time it does, maybe it impacts someone, and maybe that tiny chance is worth you keeping your smile alive for.

Maybe a crappy sketch you did as a joke or a fanfiction you wrote one night at 3am is someone out there's favourite thing in the world, maybe the time you baked shitty cookies for the staffroom at work, one person is thrilled because they forgot their lunch, maybe that person you held the door open for last week was having a shit time and your tiny action reminded them that there were kind people in the world, maybe the old man who talked to you for 30 seconds in the grocery store line has been lonely for months and you made his day with your brief few exchanged words because you let him feel seen, maybe the postit note you wrote a silly message on ten years ago for someone in school is still stuck on their desk giving them motivation and reminding them that the world isn't all bad.

Maybe you are inputting into the world more than you realise, and even if you sleep for 72 hours at a time and spend 6 days of the week crying and feel like a waste of space, maybe the world is lucky to have you in it. Even if only for the tiny moments where you subconsciously smile at a stranger - because you are always more important than you feel you are, no matter who you are and what you do.

Maybe things won't get better, the likelihood is they won't, but maybe humans are made of tough stuff and have survived bullets and falls from airplanes, so maybe you can survive a lot more than you feel you can. Tomorrow things won't feel as bad, and next time you feel even more horrible you'll know you can get through it because you survived it last time.

Maybe every minute you're surviving is worth it for those little times you impact the world silently from the shadows without even knowing it.

Sometimes all you need to to is breathe to knock down a domino. So keep breathing, even if that's all you can do.

[spongebobafettywap]

Hhh I don't like the new origin story personally. It's supposed to explain everything, make complete sense and be all in the feels but... It doesn't ? At all ?? At least not for me.

The timeline is now more broken from all the continuity errors : Nightcrawler's still officially 30-35 years old while Destiny is stated to be born in the 1850's-1860's cuz the writers really hammered in on the "Irene Adler from Sherlock Holmes" shtick. We got to see her in Immortal X-Men post WWII looking her age, as in old with white hair and wrinkles, cuz she doesn't slowly age like Mystique at all (it's one of the most pivotal part about their dynamic and relationship of Immortal vs Mortal), so ? Was Nightcrawler born before both WW ?? When Margali herself wasn't even around yet since her father was a young soldier still during the wars (who am I kidding the writer for this comic hates Margali judging by how he straight up killed her in his last one shot) ??? Destiny shouldn't look or be younger than 90 years old by the time Kurt was born (he was 21 in the 1980 annual) so why is the comic acting like she's still in her 20's-40's when she supposedly had him ??

Nightcrawler is supposed to be made from like what ? 50% of Destiny's DNA (unaltered and full on hers) + 30% of Mystique's + 10% of Baron Wagner's (an old infertile human...) + 10% of Azazel's ? Okay so why the H did he end up looking like a (+)70% Azazel baby when none of his other children ended up like that with the usual 50% ratio ??? From all his powers coming from him (because they retconned the way Mystique's were and always worked meaning Kurt doesn't actually have anything from her on that aspect), his appearance both as a mutant and when depowered (Some of Azazel's kids are just blue and depowered Nightcrawler is the human disguise Azazel uses without a beard...), his daughter TJ having a retractable tail like Azazel to Sinister's chimera experiments (splicing different mutants's DNA together to make a new one) which had Kurt's DNA mixed with two other mutants (Rachael and Ajax) resulting in Cardinal, who just looks like Azazel with red hair and red eyes, there's a fundamental lack of any "Destiny" in him. It doesn't help that Sinister (guy who makes entire genealogical trees of everyone as a flex) now has a longtime history of going against Destiny so you bet your ass he would have ran his DNA bank computer looking for any descendants of hers, saw a good 50% on Kurt and exploited that ratio to the ground for his splicing experiments. (Kurt is now the og spliced baby too)

And like we really lost something important here in the tone. Because no matter how you looked at the one from Lobdell or the one from Austen (a continuation of and addition to Lobdell's technically), there was a deep layer of tragedy to Nightcrawler's origins and you couldn't help asking yourself if things couldn't have been different for both Mystique and him if she wasn't in such a precarious situation to begin with when she had him (knew this would have happened at all) or if she just tried harder to keep him. That's why the Age of Apocalypse version of them is interesting, this is why the What-if where she raised him from birth with Destiny and Rogue was good addition. It showed that there WAS an alternative... But it wasn't in the cards he got. It was beyond either his or Mystique's control and it was just the usual uncertainty of life being at play. You felt bad for Kurt and even sympathetic for Mystique because she was somewhat a victim of circumstances. It was a tragedy because life back then was unpredictable for both of them

Not here. Mystique and Destiny planned everything, worked years for it to go exactly as intended, went to very specific terrible people for it, picked exactly what they wanted for Nightcrawler (the "child they always wanted") to look like... And on the first notice/freak ass future vision, just unceremoniously abandoned him. After all of that. Did Destiny just never check for the immediate future of them both raising the baby during the entire pregnancy ? Or noticed how her diaries never mentioned him once but did for Rogue many many times ? Then, they felt SO guilty about it that, instead of trying to make the life they forced upon him be slightly better in any way shape or form, they chose to FORGET about it to live their current lives with this adoptive daughter of theirs in peace of mind. Mystique, for some wtf reason, decided to keep the knowledge of her biological ties to Nightcrawler and has since then used it against him whenever. Destiny, the one who wanted this kid in the first place and was the reason he was suddenly abandoned because they just "could never ever possibly raise him due to VISION" (*points to the What-if story where they did raise him and she was pretty much the reason why Kurt died because she did jack and didn't even care that he died*), chose to erase everything. Gg to the one who started it all.

Nightcrawler's origins isn't a tragic story anymore. It's a comedy : the set up ? payoff ? All there. The punchline? The writer wants us to sympathize with Mystique and Destiny in these new origins like the other ones did for Mystique. They want us to sympathize with selfish lazy cowards, who've lived consequence free of the child abandonment they committed and even abandoned said child again in that weird event with Sinister this year, all in a heartbeat. Because Mystique suddenly remembered that she "cared" since that kid was related to her lover... Instead of caring because he was HER KID even with the memory erasure (that factor never stopped her from raising and loving him in those other realities)

So Kurt now : 1) is the closest thing to an IVF baby genetically profiled to be a certain way by the same parents who abandoned him at birth in a place where he was eventually found... Near death. 2) has not one, not two, but 3 irredeemable deadbeat parents (+ one straight up dead) and we now have to like two of them every time they'll get shoved into any stories that includes him (yes from the way this one-shot ended, he's an inclusion, not a main character) and 3) has no actual free will of his own. His argument with Azazel about how much fate/destiny was at play in Kurt's life when they had their fight in Heaven? Azazel was right. It's just that Nightcrawler's life was under someone else's thumb than his, Mystique and Destiny from the very start sure but also Charles since he apparently knew everything ALL ALONG being the one who erased their memories when they asked him to... The very guy that rescued Kurt from a mob, got him in the X-Men, had him face these two ladies time and time again, was there when he wanted to investigate Mystique after she name dropped Margali (never got answered still) and was his confident after the whole Azazel debacle. That guy

I just can't, man

Well yeah but to be fair Kurt's age has always been a problem given that he was originally written to be born just a few years after WWII. Best resolution I have for this problem with his age that I am amazed isn't official canon yet is just make him one of the many ageless mutants, I don't see WHY that's out of the question given Azazel and Mystique's nature.

lol wow gotta love how much contempt X-men writers have for Margali, its not enough to make her a Supervillain they also have to kill her off whenever they get the chance, she's only the only remotely healthy parental relationship Kurt has had with a person who is still alive why even try to write her properly?

The retcon with how he's made is so messy, its like okay they want to make it so Mystique and Destiny are his parents but then they realised they can't exactly just remove Azazel from the picture so now they had to make a version of having their cake and eating it too. So Mystique and Azazel had a baby together but then Mystique put that baby into Destiny. That's how I understand it, I know apparently they tried to factor Baron Wagner into it when its just like wow damn who was even asking for that irrelevant character to be involved? The actual origin makes little sense given that Kurt as you said inherited nothing from Destiny (almost as if her being his mother was a stupid idea or something!)

But you are right now instead of it being a love affair between Azazel and Mystique that ended up exposing her as a mutant due to a mutant child and having her run out of town. Now its some really convoluted origin to Nightcrawler, him being a child of like 3 parental figures and apparently of the 3 only Azazel even remotely cared about him. Which is just you know really amazing writing for all the people who demanded Mystique and Destiny be both his parents lol great job now they both look like even worse parents given they had a kid together and they opted to abandon him for no real reason.

See when it was Mystique on the run it at least made some kind of sense she abandoned him in a Moses basket as her life was too dangerous to involve a baby in and she had no one else with her at the time, now its just like "oh yeah you know me and my partner already had an adopted child but we also had a biological one that we gave up for no reason". It's also funny how Destiny wanted this child but then she doesn't have like any interaction with him or concern over his well being at all in all her years of existing as a character.

I don't like this origin much either as it really does play more like a comedic parody of comic origins than anything actually serious, but the one good thing about it is the hardcore Destiny fans didn't get it their way either.

[grumpygreenwitch]

The Fairy and the Prince #1

So alright, this is going to be an experiment for me. I write. I like writing. I am terrible at prompts and I have no idea how writing commissions work. But. The story that starts here is too long for one post. It’s too short for a book. It’s a Novella, I think they’re called. It’s Fantasy. I wrote it because the trope of “fairy/mortal romance always ends in tragedy” irks the crap out of me. It shouldn’t take the radical destruction of a partner’s nature to get your Happily Ever After. It’s going to update every other week, like clockwork even! If I can figure out Queueing in Tumblr. I need that week in between because I’m also writing more about ser Lyrian, and that’s supposed to go in the in-between week once I have more of a buffer. In any case. The tags are #Linden the fairy, #Adam the prince, #Linden and Adam, #The Fairy and the Prince. I don’t know how many parts there are, I end chapters when the chapters end. It’s at a little over 20K words at this point and not quite finished yet. It’s also not edited, so be kind.

Part 1 - Part 2 - Parts 3 & 4 - Part 5 - Part 6, 7 & 8 - Part 9 & 10 - Part 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 & 16 - Part 17, 18, & 19 - Part 20, 21 & 22 - Part 23, 24, 25 & 26 - Part 27, 28, 29 & 30 - Part 31, 32, 33 & 34 - Part 35, 36 & 37 - Part 38, 39, 40 & 41 - Part 42 & 43 - Part 44 & 45 - Part 46 & 47 - Part 48, 49, 50 & 51 - Part, 52, 53 & 54 - Part 55 & 56 - Part 57, 58, 59 & 60 - Part 61, 62, 63, 64 & 65 - Part 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71 & 72

Prince Adam met Linden while escaping his geography lessons.

Geography is one of those things everyone should know and no one wants to learn. The Queen Dowager had commanded that it be taught to the mob of prospective heirs to the throne that she'd gathered in the Royal palace, among with many other sciences and arts. Then again, the same august and childless lady had also commanded that they be taught the finer points of fencing, wrestling and knife-fighting, so everyone had a good, if resignedly terrified idea as to how she meant to solve the matter of succession without actually making a choice and angering a niece or nephew. However, these were also the same people who'd agreed to drop off their kids at the palace and under her supervision.

In any case, Adam had no more fondness for his geography studies than any other of the Princes at hand. He was fortunate, or unfortunate, enough that, the youngest of the candidates at nine years, by the time his geography lessons rolled around the teacher, a dour old priest of the Tree-Father, was either already asleep, or nearly there. All he had to do was read quietly, peeking up, until the man started snoring.

Which he'd done.

He'd only meant to slip out onto the balcony and sit on the ornate stone railing. But the day was lovely and still young, and he'd realized that one of the gutters ended not too far from the balcony, the spout carved like a horse's head. He'd leapt lightly onto it and charged into many a battle on his moss-painted steed before a nearby cornice had caught his eye. From there he'd climbed several fashionable false arches, like a great explorer over vast mountain ranges. Then he'd leapt and caught an old arrow-slit by his fingertips, and climbed further up, until he could tip-toe along a gutter made slick by decades of rain-feed moss.

By then he was nearly six stories off the ground.

He stalled after having raced along a lip of brick, mortar and stone barely wider than his fine leather slippers, which he'd already thrown off at some point between mountain-exploring and harpy-fighting (there had been three particularly angry swallows with nests under another balcony). The gutter there ended in a fish-head spout, and there the palace itself turned in a sharp corner, rather than a round tower curve.

Adam glowered at the lack of further road in impotent anger. After a few minutes, however, anger grew boring with no one there to look upon it, and he put his mind to more practical concerns. He was a clever young man, forced by circumstance to become even cleverer, struggling to leave childhood behind just to survive the deadly competition he found himself in. He was a lovely child, a little on the slim side, with his father's curly black hair and his mother's (and grand-aunt's) narrow, firm features, black brows and deep blue eyes, pale skin quickly growing pink because no one could keep him out of the summer sun for long.

A decorative ledge above him caught his eye. It was a mirror of the one he was standing on. On his tiptoes, he couldn't reach it, his fingers just shy of the goal. If he leapt, though...

He glanced over his shoulder. Far below he could just see the tops of the trees, swaying in the afternoon breeze like fretful nannies. Beyond them were the muddy grounds of the expanding Royal Gardens, and beyond that was the dark green smudge of the Hunting Woods. But there was no one to tell him no, and so he leapt.

He caught the ledge, and almost immediately his right hand slipped. The ledge was, he realized belatedly, much larger than he'd expected, and at a slant, meant to shed water off from whatever might lie beyond it. Years of rain had left it as slippery as the gutters.

He tried to find the ledge below his feet, but he was just high enough that his questing toes couldn't reach it. He tried to grip the ledge once again, but couldn't find a place that wouldn't spit out his fingers. His left hand was slipping, and for the first time it occurred to prince Adam that he might have been a mite unwise in his choice of entertainment for the afternoon. Grunting with effort he tried to lift himself up one-handed onto the ledge.

His left hand slipped.

Adam was weightless for a single, fragile moment, the tiny space between his heart beating and his breath catching.

Then he realized there was a small, strong hand gripping his left wrist, and looked up into the face of the most extraordinary creature he would ever meet in his life.

The stranger laughed, a merry and carefree sound, the ringing of cheerful bells. "You're not very good at this, are you?"

They were wearing mismatched clothing, pants too big and tied with twine around the waist, folded many times over at the leg, shirt worn so thin the sun shining at the edge of the roof behind them showed skinny arms and a slender, graceful neck. Their hair was white and fine, tipped in dark gold, a halo around a fine-boned, acorn-brown face. But their eyes...

Their eyes were shattered glass.

Adam blinked, enthralled. They were brown and green, blue and hazel; it was as if someone had taken chapel windows and made them into eyes, glorious and random and full of lights. He fought to grip the ledge with his right hand, and finally found a spot willing to meet him halfway. "It's my first time climbing this high up!" he protested.

The stranger, brown and lithe and mismatched in every way, laughed again, glad and guileless, and helped Adam scrabble onto the ledge.

"What's wrong with your eyes?" the Prince asked.

The stranger jerked back in surprise, blinked pointedly, and then squinted at Adam. "Nothing. What's wrong with yours?" they challenged.

"Nothing," Adam replied, flopping onto the ledge, which was far larger than he'd expected, the slate and stone of it sun-warm. "Other than they're boring, I suppose." He rolled over, trying to catch his breath. The blue sky above him vanished behind that white-haired face, far too close to his. "Gah!"

"What's boring about them?" the stranger demanded. "I think they're lovely. Like a bluebird's feathers." They reached out to try and pry at Adam's eyes, and the prince swatted that hand aside.

"What are you doing? It's rude to touch people without their permission!"

Fine white brows went up. "Should I have asked permission to catch you when you slipped?"

"That's different," Adam sat up, and his new acquaintance, kneeling by him, leaned back on the heels of their bare, muddy feet. "Of course you don't ask someone if you can save their life, you just do it. But when it's not important, you should always ask. It's good manners." The young prince flopped back down again. "Thank you for catching me."

"You're welcome," the stranger seemed to be mulling on Adam's words, and once again that fine-boned, brown face filled his field of view. "I don't think you're boring. I liked how you fought the swallow-harpies."

"Have you been watching me all this time?!" Adam burst up to a sitting position again.

"Yes," his savior admitted blithely. "It was much more exciting than me just climbing to catch the sun."

"Catch the sun?"

"Yes, see?" The stranger reached into a pocket of their oversized pants and pulled out something that gleamed too brightly for Adam to really see, something warm and golden like fat drops of honey held in the cup of that muddy, small hand. "It's not a lot."

"It's more than I could ever get," Adam replied, intrigued. "I didn't even know you could catch the sun like that."

"Well, it is tricky," they admitted, a delicate fluster on the brown and high cheeks revealing faint green freckles as they pocketed the sun drops again.

"What do you even do with it?" Adam asked curiously, examining his feet and finding them incredibly filthy; for some reason this pleased him immensely.

"I bring them into the woods, where the normal sun doesn't reach."

"Oh, that would be so helpful to everything there!" Adam exclaimed, and his companion flushed even deeper, all unnoticed. By the time the young prince turned to face them, they were sitting cross-legged next to the boy. "By the way, I'm prince Adam Lestrelle. But it's fine to just call me Adam." He offered his hand, trying to make the gesture very grand and grown-up.

"Oh, Adam's a good name. Better than Prince, anyways, there's too many Princes here, it'd get confusing really quickly. I think you might be the only Adam."

"I am," he admitted. "I'm also the youngest. And you?"

"Ugh." The stranger took Adam's hand; their grip was strong, dry, warm, like wood softly polished by age and use, and warmed by summer daylight. "Me too. I hate it. There's nothing good about being the youngest." They licked their lips in thought, and then nodded, seeming to have come to a decision. "You can call me Linden."

"Like the tree?"

"Yes."

Adam considered. "It suits you." He leaned closer a bit and sniffed, making Linden look at him curiously. "You smell like them, too."

Linden shoved him. "Of course I do!" They sprung up to their feet, and offered a hand. "Come on, then. Palace won't climb itself!"

There was a challenging, welcoming grin on Linden's face, as bright as the white of their hair. Adam grinned back, took their hand, and let them help him to his feet.

[autumnsorbet]

Jackie E. oak

My first Rwby OC I thought of him years ago when I first got into Ruby here he is , I'm going to be using him in the au I'm working on

Name :Jackie E. Oak

Fairy teal inspiration: Jack pumpkin head from ozma of Oz

Age:15/16

Continent of origin: anima

Occupation: huntsman, Jackie got accepted in the school early around the age of 14 like Ruby he got to skip some grades he was originally at beacon academy but then transferred, to Haven academy to be closer to his family who lives on anima

Weapon :(didn't have a name yet) 😅

Semblance: tangerine inferno (it's a fire like semblance similar to cinders magic he can use fire to fly and convert dust into fire and energy to use in the battle and can regenerate himself and any wounds he gets using heat but he has to Pace

himself his semblance uses up a lot of Aura within 7 to 10 minutes so he has to time his attacks carefully, he can fly for up to 30 minutes to 40 minutes

before his Aura tries to give give out on him and he has to wait and regenerate some of it , he can also use other fire around him and convert it into his own attacks if he needs

Magic: yes this character has magic this is a character I'm going to be using in the AAU I've been working on in the past couple of years since Volume 8 where there are other characters that have magic

on remnant but they aren't from remnant or at least aren't descendant from remnant like Oz Salem and everyone else is currently they're from worlds that

are linked to remnants similar to how the vaults are linked to remnant so Jackie does have magic he just hasn't hasn't unlocked yet

Personality:

Jackie is a fun loving and outgoing person like most characters he likes to be adventurous do dangerous and stupid things people often says he acts like he doesn't have a brain in that he acts kind of like a

airhead he also likes to do extreme stunts although he does get injured often due to his semblance having a bit of a healing Factor he sometimes

comes out with not that much damage to him, he also likes to flirt with everybody he needs doesn't matter who if he thinks they're interesting person he could date he'll flirt with them

Back story:

Child hood

Jackie is a childhood friend of oscars they've known each other since they were 3 years old, Jackie has two older sisters and had an older brother he has

four nieces and nephews and two brother-in-laws, his parents are also alive in their 50s, his brother

was killed on a day called silver Sunday along with Oscar's parents his brother was a silver eye warrior, Oscar's parents were in the car with Oscar's great

aunt from his father's side who was also a civil right warrior and on that day a bunch of silverlight warriors who lived in the city that Oscar and Jackie lived in were all targeted by an unknown group that is secretly working for Salem to hunt down and capture or kill silver-eyed warriors

Ages 13-16

After his brother passed away and his friend Oscar moved Jackie owned his skills and got accepted into one of the huntsman academies after getting noticed by professor ozpin , even though he was

only 14 years old his family didn't like the idea of him also becoming a huntsman like his brother at first but after seeing that he was getting accepted early decided to give him the chance to go off on his, Jackie for a few years was that beacon

academy within after his parents got sick he transferred to menstrual academy to be closer back with his family, after he graduated he and his team split up and he ended up joining and taking his

brother's place on the team that his brother was a part of Jackie is temporarily living in vacuo supporting an organization that his family and even Oscar's family has been a part of for generations called The starlight organization he's currently there trying to help his cousin take over the starlight organization from a from an in-law who currently has control over the full organization